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Ira Chernus: The Six-Day War 50 years later

By Ira Chernus

Posted:
06/03/2017 07:40:40 PM MDT

In this June 7, 1967. file photo, Israeli troops enter Gaza City in the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War. It may well be remembered as a pyrrhic victory for Israel: a six-day war in which it vanquished several Arab armies, only to be saddled with a 50-year fight with the Palestinians for the Holy Land. A half century after the watershed 1967 Mideast war, many in Israel think the lighting victory planted the seeds of doom. (Anonymous / AP)

June 5th through 10th marks the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, when Israel conquered and occupied the Palestinian territories we call the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Fifty years later the occupation continues, with no end in sight.

For about half of those 50 years I proudly claimed to be Boulder's most prominent Jewish critic of Israel's occupation policies. I often decried those policies, on the editorial page of the Camera and wherever else I could, because they were harsh, immoral, and illegal. They still are. That has not changed. The suffering of the Palestinians has not changed either.

In this June 8, 1967 file photo, Israeli soldiers search Jordanian prisoners during mopping up operations in the old city of Jerusalem, as the city came under Jewish control during the Six-Day War. (Anonymous / AP)

Nor has the justification we hear from the government of Israel and its supporters, claiming that Israel is forced to be a harsh occupier for the sake of security. This is plain nonsense. Occupying another people's land and controlling their lives never keeps anyone secure.

The victims of the occupation live in constant fear. They never know when some soldiers, many of them barely out of childhood, will issue an arbitrary order and enforce it with rifle butts or bullets.

Occupation offers no security for the occupiers either. Every day that such injustice continues, the occupied people will understandably grow more frustrated, irritated, and angry. It's no surprise that the Palestinians have resisted Israeli military control for 50 years now. No one should expect that to change. We surely would do the same.

The real surprise is that the Palestinian people, while still firmly resisting, have become so much less violent, when we might well expect them to have moved in the opposite direction. That is one big change over this half-century.

It's especially surprising because of another change: Israeli Jewish opinion has shifted to the right, demanding continued occupation and increased settlement of Jews in the West Bank. Israel's government, always sensitive to the political winds, has blocked any compromise that might make both sides more secure.

In this June 3, 1967 file photo, Gen. Moshe Dayan talks to newsmen in Tel Aviv as he holds his first press conference after taking the post of Minister of Defense. (Anonymous / AP)

The third change, the one that affects me most personally, is that I can no longer claim Boulder's most prominent Jewish critique of Israel. For most of the last decade, in Boulder as across the U.S., a growing chorus of Jewish voices has cried out against Israel's policies. I'm glad to say that many of those voices are more articulate and widely heard than mine.

Though Jewish critics of Israel's policies differ on specific issues, they all share one basic message to the Israeli government: You claim that continuing the occupation and expanding the settlements will keep all Jews safer. We know that is not true. We must speak out and say: "Not in our name." The only way to make Jews safer is to end the occupation, withdraw the settlements, and support a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel, which is what poll after poll says a vast majority of Palestinians want.

This rising Jewish critique of Israeli policy has sparked a sea change in American Jewish opinion. Here, poll after poll tells us that a majority of Jews want the same kind of peace settlement that the Palestinians want. So we have a de facto political alliance between Palestinians and U.S. Jews.

This alliance has not yet swayed U.S. government policy because it faces another powerful alliance. A minority of U.S. Jews, who support Israel's occupation and settlement policies, have disproportionate power in American Jewish organizations. (They are also disproportionately old, male, and wealthy, which helps to explain their power.) Their spurious claim to speak for the whole U.S. Jewish community is, unfortunately, still widely accepted.

This Jewish minority allies with conservative Christian Americans, who are the strongest driving force keeping the U.S. government from speaking out forcefully to demand a just peace settlement.

If we look over the whole past half-century, though, it's clear that history is not on the conservatives' side. Global opinion has shifted massively to sympathy for the Palestinians' justified resistance to occupation. The continuing shift in the same direction among American Jews is part of that global movement. The just peace that this movement demands can be blocked a while longer. But it cannot be denied forever.

Ira Chernus is professor emeritus of religious studies at CU Boulder. He lives in Longmont.

In this June 8, 1967 file photo, an Israeli vehicle moves up towards the fighting on the Israeli-Syrian front passing a knocked out Syrian during the Six-Day War. (BODINI / AP)

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